McBTC

... and, if the price of fuel oil is too high the elderly can always burn books to stay warm this winter. Mark Steyn likened the mindset of global warming alarmists to being in first-class staterooms aboard the Titanic and rooting for the iceberg.

tandempower

If younger people would conserve energy by wearing warmer clothes, the energy savings would be available to the elderly. High demand drives prices up. Conservation drives prices down. The exception is when suppliers raise prices in an effort to extract higher revenues from lower sales. Still, it should be possible for needy people to get the energy they need for heating and other uses if those who can conserve do.

When no one conserves, prices are driven up and those who can't afford the rising prices bear the brunt of scarcity. When everyone conserves, the unconsumed surpluses can be allocated as needed or further conserved for the future. I can't figure out why you seem to keep blaming deprivation on conservation when exactly the opposite is true.

McBTC

Global cooling drives up fuel use and politically-correct centralized planning that is indifferent to market forces and that are based on unverifiable climate models that fail to incorporate natural causes as factors in climate change, waste precious resources on unproductive investments and create artificial shortages while citizens are further ravaged by broken economies that are being bled by government bureaucrats, including the government-education complex which has been one of the biggest facilitators of the global warming hoax and scare tactics.

Mobile 155

Elkdog:

The we that outnumber the you by 90 to one in this country. The we that are not like the you that is destroying Greece. Not the me maybe and not the physical you but the ones that believe success is bad and comfort is bad.

Without the first world the third world would starve. The world is no where close to full and no one so far has presented evidence that it is.

If I had a mouse in my pocket it would be my mouse because I don't care about your mouse that is your concern.

That was the point of my poll. People are concerned about what effects them first and the their family, then relatives and lastly people they don't know.

There is nothing we can do about the future after we are gone. All of mankind is like a hand stuck in a bucket of Water. Pull the hand out and the water fills in the space and it is like it was never there.

Planes, trains, cars, air conditioning are all things people are willing to work for and pay for. And a successful society is not going to sacrifice for an unsuccessful one for long.

If the world is ever full it will end up with survival of the most powerful not the most idealological. And in my opinion the socialist position is the least likely to end up as sustainable. At the point where 51 percent are supporting 49 there will be revolution and then the earth will be even less full. At least that has been what history has taught us.

Machka 

That's called "summer" in the Canadian prairies and many parts of Australia. It's normal.

tandempower

What 'artificial shortages?' You are implying that more economic growth eliminates shortages and recessions but it's just not the case. Economic growth is the cause of shortages and recessions. Waste promotes economic growth by stimulating more sales and deficit spending to replace wasted purchases, but in the end it is still waste and someone will have to go without because of what was destroyed instead of being used more fully and sparingly.

The societies that consume these things are not doing so as a result of success. They are funded by government stimulated GDP growth as a response to recession that they fail to overcome without government intervention. If the next recession receives NO government stimulus and people are required to cut their budgets to make due with falling GDP, let me know how many people are using 'planes, trains, cars, and air conditioning' at that point.

I don't really understand the ecology of prairies and why trees don't grow in them. Do you understand the physics of how sunlight delivers energy that heats dead matter up while causing plants to grow and heat up less as a result? Do you understand how the Earth cools down because the night side is shaded by the day side and the poles are shaded by the tilt of the planet away from the sun? Do you understand how trees and plants also shade the ground while absorbing the sunlight that would heat up that same ground if the trees and plants were absent? Do you understand how unshaded ground bakes dry and convects hot, dry air into the atmosphere where it dries up clouds above?

Machka 

Um ... I, quite possibly, understand all of those concepts better than you.

However they have nothing to do with my comment. Fact is, a lot of us cycle in areas where trees do not shade the road in the heat of summer, year after year ... and its OK. We adapt and deal with it.

Mobile 155

True Machka. Trees and plants don't grow everywhere. There is a reason there is an area in the mountains they call, "the tree line."

Mankind has not been great at tree management either. I have lived in mountain communities and discovered that there is such a think as too many trees. I also have learned that nature will deal with the idea of too many trees.

I have lived in a community that didn't allow tree cutting even on your own property without a permit. Over many years the forests got so thick that nature brought in insects that killed giant swaths of these trees all along the west coast from California to Washington.

To add insult to injury we have learned such forests are prone to uncontrollable fires because the trees are so close together. It is even happening this summer. And the dead trees burn with gusto.

Maybe we could learn that mankind can't control nature but must learn to adapt to what nature does?

Machka 

We ... but especially Rowan ... have been a victim of that.


I also know that planting trees without a lot of careful consideration for what you are doing can have negative results. There are native vs. non-native issues, allergy issues, size issues, and other potential issues. What is a popular tree in one area might be a noxious weed in another. Lots of research required.



And yes absolutely ... mankind certainly cannot control nature. Nature will always win. But fortunately we, like other animals, can adapt to it.

McBTC

So, conservationists are those people we see, out for a walk with a big bag of aluminum cans over their shoulder... and, we'd all be better off with more of them conservationists because all those wasted cans are a big problem. And, like any capitalistic economy if you want more you pay more and we all want to pay for more conservationists to solve the problem of wasted cans but it would be wasteful for them to spend all of their time picking up cans when all we have to do is hire these conservationists to stand in the way of the machines that filled the cans so no one needs these problem cans anymore. So now we have all of these conservationists standing in the way of machines that used to fill cans with something people wanted but didn't really, really need.

tandempower

Please enlighten me then as to what prevents trees from growing above the tree line of a mountain or in a prairie. Something to do with the ability of the roots to anchor or not?

Well, there you go. If you think overly dense tree populations are prone to self-destruction, you could advocate trimming and thinning of those areas while protecting the canopy/shade cover. Surely we can at least agree on the fact that the ground needs to stay cool in order to stay moist and that where trees are absent, the lack of shade causes plants and grasses to dry up faster than if they were shaded? Can we also agree that the temperature is generally cooler inside a forest or treed area of a city because of the shade and photosynthetic absorption of sunlight? Even if global warming weren't an issue, couldn't we agree that shade-cooled cities would be more comfortable than sun-heated ones in hot months? Then, in cold months when some areas get cold enough to welcome sunlight for warming, it's handy that (some) trees shed their leaves for the winter, right?

Biomass can be trimmed and thinned and used as fuel for electricity or heating instead of burning in forest fires. Some dead material is good as mulch to protect soil microbes and their moisture, but some can be removed and used for energy.



The problem is that the harder we fight nature, the harder it fights back. Think about all the dry heat in the atmosphere. The hotter it gets, the more water has to evaporate to form clouds. The more water it takes to form a cloud dense enough to shade itself into condensation, the more torrential the rain that falls out of it. The more torrential the rain, the more erosion and flooding. The more erosion and flooding, the more destruction. So, yes, nature wins but if there was more plant/tree cover in hot areas, less heat would convect into the air and so rains would be more frequent and milder. Nature still wins but we don't get spanked in the process. Isn't that win-win?

Well, if all aluminum cans were put into landfills or dumped in the ocean, it would be harder to mine for new aluminum. Generally it is better to manage resource efficiently than to waste and incur higher costs to replenish what is lost by waste. The reason waste is a popular means of fiscal stimulus in a bull economy is because when something is wasted instead of conserved, it generates a transaction. E.g if you total your car once a year, the auto dealer gets to sell one car per year to you instead of less. That's GDP growth! If the insurance pays for the replacement car, it doesn't cut into your budget until later after you've been payer higher rates for many years. Such forms of waste-generated stimulus grow GDP for a while but they start to build up like dead wood in a forest and eventually markets crash and burn. Then, of course, the fools begin advocating for more stimulus to reboot the waste-economy. In the process, energy and other natural resources are diminishing and the environment is being destroyed and polluted. If you think about these things, you will eventually see how energy and destruction work in all systems. Yes, there is revival and replenishment but you have to understand how those work too and conservation is always good because it insures we have more reserves of everything good available instead of less.

McBTC

New Economics, 101: the government shall continue to burn through billions more dollars on filing cabinets full of worthless global warming junk science as every dollar to a global warming fearmongering government scientist fuels GDP while at the same time slashes GDP growth based on the production of billions of dollars worth of wasteful products. The millions of jobs lost in foregoing all of these wasteful products are not a problem as the futures of the next generation are not destroyed but rather uplifted by their sacrifice and poorer nations being deprived of the benefits of modernity can continue to live in poverty and squalor as conservationism intended.

McBTC

What happens when a people have lost the ability to survive on their own merit and can only live off the frosty teet of their government overlords and with their hand-outs of sugar-coated platitudes?

Roody

That is totally absurd.

First of all, coal smoke is just as bad for the lungs as wood smoke. Just sk the people of Beijing, who

Those countries don't have the money to build power plants after being exploited by big American and European (and now Chinese) corporations for generations. Also, it will be very good for the developing countries (and the entire world) if they are able to "leapfrog" coal technology and go directly to more sustainable energy sources.

I can't stand the blatant hypocrisy of these fat cats, who are pretending to care about the poor when all they really want is more markets for their coal, which the western world is rapidly abandoning. It's similar to the way they fool ordinary Americans into thinking that only cars and cheap gasoline can make them happy.

[HR][/HR]

Smog has now been determined by the WHO and other health organizations to cause lung cancer. Smog was already known to cause or to contribute to other life-threatening ailments such as asthma, COPD, pneumonia, and heart disease. Millions of lives are lost every year.

Toxic smog threatens millions of Chinese lives - Telegraph

McBTC

McBTC

Brazil, Russia, India, China... they're all copying the example set by the West. They've seen the outcome and now they're copying our moves because they more than all of the Leftists and libs and the global warming doomsday machine know far more than pampered Westerners what it's like not to live in the Modern world:

Roody

I take a more balanced and realistic approach. Poor countries do need access to more energy. But using coal and petroleum to produce the energy does them much more damage in both the short and long run. They will face enormously expensive consequences of carbon emission such as flooding from rising sea levels and smog, which are already causing problems in many parts of the world. Other problems associated with climate change are starting to manifest, such as drought, desertification, flooding, and disruption of food growing. These problems will devastate third world countries at least as much as they will developed countries, draining them of financial resources that are already scarce.

If we want to help people in poor countries, we should move toward sustainable energy sources for both them and ourselves. making the problem worse will not make the problem better!

Roody

Crichton himself is one of the biggest tools produced by Western society!

McBTC

The only thing that comes out of the smokestack of a modern coal-fired power plant is water and CO2. Germany is building coal-fired power plants. Do you know how many coal-fired power plants are built in China in a year? And, How many nuclear power plants?

McBTC

Everytime you read a Huffington Post article about the world coming to an end and the lead is a picture of a power plant spewing smoke out its stacks as if we're witnessing hell on earth, understand that all of the smoke is nothing but water vapor -- perhaps photographically enhanced to look black and ominous like a toxic cloud of fire and brimstone -- but, just water vapor. We're living in a big lie every time we're exposed to the mainstream media and the Leftist-liberal establishment and all of the radical environmentalists and conservationists and anti-capitalism red guard revolutionaries that are pushing the global warming hoax with their scare tactics.

McBTC

It's hard to believe he was anti-witchcraft!

Roody

True...it always surprises me when these anti-Earth ideologues have any progressive values whatsoever.

McBTC

... no surprise that he's the victim of ad hominem attacks from institutionalized Left-wing conservationism, radical environmentalism and government-sponsored climatism movements.

Mobile 155

Tandempower:
I am not going to get into why trees don't grow where they don't grow all of that information was available in Jr. High.

What I am concerned with is how you suggest we harvest all of the over growth and dead wood from these forests? Surely you know the manpower alone would be massive. If you tried it with hand saws, to coincide with the hand scythe you cut your grass with, the labor force would be even bigger.

Then you have the problem of removal. Either you use massive amounts of power equipment or you try to haul it out by bicycle or by hand. Then there is storage till the wood can be used. You also have the chemical treatment so the bugs don't infest the dead wood.

You can't burn wet wood so you have to dry it in storage yards till it can be cut and split. It then has to be hauled to the homes to be burned.

We haven't talked about who will pay for all of this but let's say it was worked out. Do you seriously believe burning wood is cleaner than natural gas? Have you ever had a wood burning stove? Think soot and lots of it.

It is a bit like the suggestion that we help developing countries skip the energy production methods we now use and teach them better methods. And how will they pay for that new method?

It all comes down to who pays. During the early days of the tree fiasco the government came by and tagged infected trees. The home owner was then responsible for removal. I had six trees removed at a cost of about $3200.00.

They ran into the problem of having people that couldn't afford $1000.00 let alone $3200.00 were given a grant to have their trees removed from a state fund.

Home owners that had been paying to have the trees removed stopped paying and soon the state relented and paid for all the tree removal.

Nothing in this life is free and most people aren't going to voluntarily fund a project that doesn't benefit them as much as it does someone else.

That isn't going to be an easy nut to crack.

Machka 

Take a class. I'm sure your local community college would have biology courses??


"Trimming and thinning" is done through planned burns.

Again ... take that biology class.

In it, you may learn that different plants and animals do well in different environments. Something that thrives in a desert may not thrive in a rainforest ... something that thrives in hot weather, might not thrive in the cold.

It may be cooler inside some types of forest but having been in a tropical rainforest when it is a very humid 40 degrees, I'm not sure it was any cooler under the trees than it was in the more open areas. At least you might be able to catch a breeze in the open areas.

And cooler and damper isn't necessarily a desirable thing. Where we live, we selected a location that gets quite a bit of sun, and we completely avoided the suburbs in the shadow of the mountain or in heavily treed areas. Our area dries out ... those other suburbs don't. You can't even put clothes on the line with any hope they'll dry. And after the bushfire, we steer clear of heavily treed areas.



I'll also add ...

1) it is a natural lifecycle for certain plants and grasses to dry up. They are supposed to do that ... that's how they work.

2) tree cover can kill certain plants and grasses. Some plants and grasses thrive in full sun ... and some trees have an acidity level that is not conducive to allowing certain plants and grasses to grow beneath them.